We’re Living Through Miracles But Can’t See
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From Hanukkah to modern Israel, Jews struggle to recognize miracles while they’re happening, and only grasp them in hindsight.
The Greek rulers of the Land of Israel around 150 BCE persecuted the Jewish people in horrific ways. The Hashmonai family led a Jewish revolt against the Greeks. As the world’s strongest army at the time, the odds pointed against the Jews, and yet the Hashmonaim defeated them. The victory was so surprising that it can only be attributed to Divine providence.
A curiosity of the Hanukkah events is the necessity of the second miracle, that of the Temple’s one-day oil supply lasting eight days. The second miracle seems extraneous; wasn’t the miracle of the military victory sufficient?
An additional challenge of the Hanukkah story is the attempt, about 250 years after the Maccabean revolt against the Greeks. The Romans had destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and the Talmudic Sage Abaye is quoted as suggesting that Hanukkah be canceled. Abaye’s teacher, Rav Yosef, objected to his student’s suggestion and argued that Hanukkah must be continued to be observed “Because the miracle [should be] publicized.”
When the Jews were saved at the splitting of the Sea, although the miracle seemed obvious, the people needed Moses and Miriam to lead them in praise of God, because, as apparent as the miracle is to us thousands of years later, the people couldn’t perceive it then.
When Mordechai and Esther are facing Haman’s genocide, they couldn’t perceive the miracle of Esther being placed as Queen. Mordechai suggests to Esther, but isn’t sure, that Divine providence had placed her in that place, “Who knows?” he asked her, “Perhaps you have attained [your] royal position for just such a crisis.”
The Jews at the Sea, Mordechai and Esther in the Purim story, and the Jews of the Hanukkah story couldn’t perceive the miracles happening to them because they were unable to process the events around them, having just experienced them. Humans hit real walls in perceiving events in real time, as that endless stream of sensory input swamps their cognitive resources, making it tough to parse and weave together what’s happening right then and there.
At the heart of this struggle is “event segmentation,” where people chop up ongoing action into bite-sized units by spotting changes. But in messy situations, it gets blurry and error-prone under pressure. Moses and Miriam needed to tell the people they had just experienced a miracle, Mordechai had to spell it out for Esther, and God had to perform a second miracle of the oil in the Temple, because the Jews couldn’t perceive the most obvious of miracles in real time.
The Jews of today’s times are suffering from the same challenge of “event perception.” Over the past two years, they have experienced numerous events that experts are having trouble explaining, especially when taken as a cumulative series of events.
On September 17, 2024, Israel’s audacious pager operation detonated thousands of Hezbollah devices across Lebanon, slaying over 40 fighters and maiming thousands more, essentially ending the terrorist group’s ability to wage war against the Jewish state. This was a masterstroke of ingenuity against Iranian proxies. The very next day, September 18, walkie-talkies worn by secondary Hezbollah fighters erupted in fiery betrayal, claiming twenty more lives and injuring hundreds. Swift as justice, on September 20, commander Ali Karaki and other Hezbollah leaders were eliminated by Israeli jets flying over Beirut.
Ten days after the pager blasts and walkie-talkie explosions that crippled Hezbollah, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boldly addressed the United Nations decrying terror, Israeli forces used more than 80 tons of explosives dropped from jet planes to obliterate Hassan Nasrallah and the Iranian general he was meeting with in what was until then thought to be an impenetrable bunker.
On December 8, 2024, amid Bashar Assad’s crumbling tyranny in Syria, Israel unleashed Operation Bashan Arrow, one of its largest operations that most Israelis have no idea occurred. Over 350 IDF jets pulverized 80% of Syria’s arsenal, forever eliminating Syria as a threat to Israel.
In the 12-day war of June 2025, Israel relentlessly attacked Iran. Precision bombings ravaged Tehran’s military, shattering Iran’s arsenal. Operation Red Wedding eradicated 30 top generals while Operation Narnia eliminated nine nuclear scientists. Despite extreme engine stress from long-range flights under Iranian air defenses, technical teams found engines in pristine condition post-mission, with only 30% needing maintenance. Over 12 days, 200 planes operated continuously without crashes or malfunctions. This is an unexplained phenomenon that stumps engineers until today.
In that war, Iran’s grand barrage of over 2,000 missiles and hundreds of drones crumbled against Israel’s ironclad defenses. Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome intercepted 99%, leaving single-digit Israeli casualties. Tehran’s promises and experts’ expectations of “thousands of dead Israelis” never materialized.
One mystifying event was when the director-general of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Prof. Shlomi Codish, ordered the evacuation of the old surgical ward building the day before an Iranian ballistic missile struck it directly, causing extensive damage but only minor injuries since patients and staff were in protected areas.
On February 20, 2025 the nation was forced to watch the disgusting Palestinian celebration of the execution of the Bibas babies amid their return. But the Palestinians planned to kill a thousand Jews that day. Incredibly, their plot of exploding five Tel Aviv buses was foiled when all the explosives detonated at 9 PM in a parking lot instead of 9 AM on crowded Tel Aviv streets. A thousand mothers, fathers, and children lived in yet another unexplainable outcome.
Yahya Sinwar struck on October 7, 2023, months before his grand “noose of death” was ready. Hezbollah’s border stayed quiet, Iran’s missiles remained crated, and Hamas fought alone. That premature lunge shattered the synchronized apocalypse meant to drown Israel in fire from three fronts. Because the Palestinian terrorist jumped the gun, the Jewish state survived intact. While the October 7attack will always be remembered as a tragedy, the Jewish people must always recognize that it was designed to kill millions of Jews and annihilate the State of Israel.
Looking back at all of the unexplained events, especially when combined, it becomes impossible to understand them in natural ways. Among its losses, today’s Jews can’t perceive the miraculous nature of the events of the last two years. Like the Jews at the Sea, during Purim, and at the Hanukkah victory, the Jewish people today suffer from a lack of “event perception.”
This Hanukkah when Jews praise God for the “miracles of then and today,” they should focus on the many miracles of today.
A version of this op-ed originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post
I live in Israel and was here for all of the events mentioned in your article and I am aware of the great miracles that Hashem has blessed us with. There are a lot of Jews who see Hashem's hand in what is happening.
B"H, that's true, but the barrage of attacks against us sometimes prevents us from thanking Hashem properly for the miracles He constantly protects us with.
For this reason alone, an article like this one is important as 'food for thought'—i.e., to realize how grateful we must be, and to pray for continued Divine Providence.